


i'll walk until i'm free of you

by cosettefauchelevents



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, am i capable of writing actual dialogue?, we will never know, why is this so ridiculously angsty?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 13:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4436462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosettefauchelevents/pseuds/cosettefauchelevents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the more she looks at him, the harder it is to pretend that he’s not setting her alight from the inside.the harder it is to not set the world in flames.<br/>set in the middle of 1x03</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll walk until i'm free of you

**Author's Note:**

> this just in- I am physically incapable of writing anything that isn’t ridiculously overdramatic and metaphor-laden.who knew.

Demelza walks.

She walks for miles and miles across the beaches surrounding Nampara, letting the freezing sea winds strip away the haze from her mind. She walks until her feet are sore and her skin is as cold as ice, walks until all she can see are footprints in the sand.

She walks until she can forget for a moment the way she feels when Ross looks at her, when his hands brush hers accidentally.

She walks until she can feel clean again.

Jud and Prudie grumble when she whistles Garrick to her heels and sets off, but she fobs them off with excuses that all her chores are done and that the master wanted her to see all was well, and at the mention of his name they let her go. He’s out, anyway, most of the time, and she’s always back by the time he gets in, ready with fresh armour around her heart.

It crumbles like wet paper when he smiles at her.

She doesn’t know how long she can go on like this, freezing herself on her walks to stop the fire inside her consuming her, but she knows she has to carry on. The alternative is a life with her father, a life of beatings and blows and never enough to eat, a life without Ross. It’s unthinkable now.

So she keeps walking, and she keeps curling her hands into fists when she serves him to stop herself from touching him, keeps biting her lips so that she won’t tell him what’s burning her up from the inside. Her shoes are worn out and there are crescent shaped scars on her palms and her lips are bloody with words she cannot ever let loose, but she has never been this happy.

Nor has she been this sad, but she tells herself it’s enough to live in this odd stone house with three meals a day and new clothes and her own time to do what she likes, forever orbiting a volatile star of a man with a smile like flowers just starting to bloom in the spring, that it’s enough simply to watch him and feed him and mock him and _serve_ him, this master who swooped down one day and rescued her forever.

She’s lying to herself. Every day she feels herself coming more alive beside him, feels higher than she ever has before, only to fall like a stone from a cliff when she remembers that they can never be a them. Not for all the copper in the mines.

He becomes as predictable to her as her own heartbeat, his call of her name as familiar as her skin. He asks her to eat with him and she does, choking down wishes that this instant could become a forever. She tries on ballgowns worth more than herself and imagines a life where she is worthy of them and of him.

Her walks get longer.

Her shoes give out and her scars do not heal and her mouth tastes constantly of iron and love and hurt, and still she acts as well as any fine lady that everything is fine. Acts as if she doesn’t notice every line on his face, every crack of his hands, every inch of him that she can. Acts as if he isn’t tearing her apart.

She doesn’t know how much longer her charade can last, and there’s only so far she can walk before it runs out.


End file.
